Teens charged with swiping 4 Zipcars busted after cops tracked them down with GPS

Rocco Parascandola, New York Daily News
·1 min read

NEW YORK — They were gone in 60 seconds — but a group of teenage car thieves were tracked down and busted soon after they stole four Zipcars from a Brooklyn garage thanks to the vehicles’ GPS systems, police said Monday.

The six suspects, 17 to 19 years old, were issued desk appearance tickets and released after being charged last week with criminal possession of stolen property.

They were nabbed after a Zipcar worker from a garage on Bartlett Street near Broadway in Williamsburg showed up to the 90th Precinct on Thursday night to report the theft of the ride-sharing vehicles, police said.

The employee said the cars — two Honda Civics and two Honda CR-Vs — could each be tracked on his laptop because they were all equipped with GPS systems.

Cops immediately located the cars and alerted commands in Harlem, Washington Heights and the Bronx, police said.

One car was found unoccupied near Yankee Stadium, but the others were all on the road at the time. Cops spotted the vehicles, forced the drivers to pull over and made the arrests.

Police said the cars were stolen using a Zipcard, which allows renters to unlock a vehicle’s doors by holding it over a card reader on the windshield.

It wasn’t clear how the suspects obtained a Zipcard or if they had more than one.

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